I will not be like them.....
My relationship with my parents is fairly complicated, due in part to a fucked up childhood, product of a broken home yadda yadda yadda, but mostly due to the fact that they're both mental and not in a good way.

My dad left home when I was 8 weeks old, and was conspicous largely by his absence when we were growing up. The break up was as far from amicable as you can get and my mam and dad hurled abuse at each other via us for many a year afterwards. Bound to lead to productive, well-rounded children right?

Dad was, and still is, a borderline alcoholic who has no paternal instinct whatsoever, and thinks that children are an emotional and financial drain and not much else (fair play if that's your opinion but for fuck's sake keep it in your pants then!). Mam is emotionally unstable, and had a tendency towards all sorts of substances and men of varying degrees of dodgyness. Led to an, erm, interesting childhood.

Anyway, as a result growing up I wanted to be the exact opposite of both my parents, and spent a lot of time with my grandparents, living with both sets for fairly lengthy periods, but mostly my mam's mam. My nanna was an amazing woman, and I'm told I'm a lot like her, which frankly is the biggest compliment anyone could pay me. She was everything a parent should be in my eyes. She took me in numerous times, she made sure I had clean clothes and was fed and all the boring stuff. She made sure I did my homework. But more than that she was the only person in my life I absolutely knew I could count on, without a shadow of a doubt, no matter what. She has dragged me thorough every crisis of my life thus far (they have been numerous and legion, I don't do things by halves :D). She made me laugh, she made me cry, and she loved and protected me with a ferociousness I'd never before experienced.

Anyway, to get this back on topic. As I get older I realise that I am like my parents in lots of ways, much as it annoys the fuck out of me to admit it.

From my father I get:
* a tendency to drink whenever life pisses me off that bit too much, and not stop until something or someone forces me to.
* A love of reading (I remember visiting him when I was about 14 for the first time on over 2 years and he made me sit in silence for over an hour while he finished reading the latest Stephen King, twunt), to be fair the best thing he ever got me was a subscription to Brittania before everyone had the internetz and books were out of my spending power.
* Lots of my fav music (including but not limited to 10cc, Beautiful South, Madness, Led Zep, Bowie, Pink Floyd, any and all Motown and Northern Soul)
* My temper (tho I control it a lot better than he does)
* Sarcasm
* Hair that refuses to be controlled
* Exceptionally small ears
* A tendency to state the obvious, in a very patronising way
* A love of cooking, but not conventional cooking. The type of mess around in the kitchen chucking loads of stuff in a pan to see what it tastes like kind of cooking.
* I like James Bond, despite being determined not to.
* A love of cars. Damn not being allowed to drive!
* An intense dislike of my paternal grandparents that conflicts with an intense love of them. I've watched him battle with this as I got older and started seeing him again, and it fucks me off that I now have the same internal battle.


From my mother I get:
* My looks (my kid looks exactly like me, I look exactly like my mam and she looks exactly like her mam)
* A love of Scrabble and a dislike of tv
* Lots of my fav music (including but not limited to The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Kinks, The Drifters, Erasure and other camp dance)
* A fair bit of emotional instability
* A metric ass-ton of guilt about the way the family situation turned out
* A whole fuckload of 'Why can't you be more like your sister?', erm cos she's a fucktard with less personality than the dog's last shite!
* An inclination towards befriending camp gay men
* A 20 a day ciggie habit, and in my misspent yoof a tendency towards a fair few not-strictly-legal substances (that's sorted now tho, I'm a good girl these days).

From them both I get a determination not to fuck things up for my kid, and to remember that above all else I am a parent and for at least the next 15 years there's a littley relying on me to make sure everything is ok. So far I think I'm doing pretty good all told.

The bad news for my kid is she's turning into me more and more by the day, from her love of Star Wars, to her flippant responses, to her crazy mind-of-its-own hair, and her total lack of subtlety or tact. She also seems to have inherited my incredible natural grace, love of reading (down to signs on buses and cereal packets ffs), intolerance of bullshit, and lack of any sense of direction.

The only thing I can't fathom is her hatred of cheese, weirdo.

Apologies for length internet peeps, I came over all Magnus Magnusson for a moment there.
(flyme, Mon 4 May 2009, 18:08, 3 replies)

I hate cheese, and I'm not weird :(

( Major Turd for tonight only, Mon 4 May 2009, 19:35, closed)

how can anyone....
...hate cheese? 'tis the future dontcha know?
(flyme, Mon 4 May 2009, 20:09, closed)

^THIS^
That is all
( TheMagicDwarf is back like ballroom dancing, Tue 5 May 2009, 12:39, closed)